The paradigm shift
Hey folks, Joe Showers here. This is my first post for the jog and I hope to be useful in contributing ideas and sparking conversation from here on out.
I hope this post inspires you to keep trying a little harder. It's about shifting your paradigm on juggling. First, the definition of a paradigm is "A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline". What that means is a paradigm is the way we jugglers all say that five club backcrosses are really hard. If you box yourself into a paradigm, your physical responses will be a function of your mental presets, or if you don't believe you can do it, you won't. I've been thinking a lot lately about Anthony Gatto and what he has brought to juggling in the past 20 years. I haven't been juggling too long, but apparently in the 70's, it was really impressive to walk into a gym and see anyone holding a five club cascade for any length of time. During the 80's, there were a few five clubbers, more five ballers and more people experimenting with higher numbers, more spins, different patterns and such. Then Gatto came along, grabbed the juggling community by it's small hairs and yanked it to where it is today.
Gatto has really showed us all about what it means to not have paradigms. He is on the cutting edge of technical juggling, way out in front of any of us but that doesn't mean there can't be anyone better. Even though Gatto is great now, he wasn't born with all this ability, he just thought juggling was not something to be feared, but enjoyed and pushed to it's limits. I could go on and on about how great Gatto is, but I'd rather relate this to you and me. I see more and more kids learn their five ball cascade younger and younger. I see more and more people in the gym juggling seven balls, five clubs, eight ring pulldowns, whatever it is, I see a lot of talent these days. That means due to paradigm shifts, juggling is getting easier. If every juggler you know does seven balls easily, wouldn't it seem easy to be a seven ball juggler yourself? As people push each other to higher limits, one day it will seem easy to be able to flash 11 balls in your first year of juggling, maybe seven clubs and ten rings or something along those lines. So why does it have to be so far in the future?
If we know that juggling now makes juggling 20 years ago look like crap (for the most part) then why can't we look to the future of juggling and say what we do today will look like child's play. The things we think are impossible will soon be done and it will pull the juggling community up with it. So never think something is impossible, especially when refering to juggling, because it's only impossible because we think it is and choose to not try as hard as we can with it. This doesn't just apply to new world records, but personal practices as well. Plenty of people can do Alberts, so don't try it once and say it's impossible. You have to stay positive and keep trying, saying to yourself all along "One day I'll be able to run this no problem, so I gotta start somewhere". Practice is important, but even more important than that is the attitude you have while practicing. If you think of something really hard you would like to learn, you gotta start small, work your way up and keep thinking of how great it will be once you do learn it... and yes, your arms are streachy enough, you are strong enough and nothing is impossible. We just have to keep looking to the future and realizing that we all have great potential, as long as we choose to accept it.
When you meet a young kid (13 or so) at a convention who can juggle five balls and has been working on it for only five months, you shouldn't think he's a jerk, you should appreciate the leaps and bounds juggling has taken in the last few decades. This is good for the young crop, but the older jugglers can benefit from this as well. You don't have to be young to learn new moves. Of course, age catches up with people, but I've seen 80 year olds holding five ring cascades with some tricks. So no more complaining. Ahh, I can smell the good times ahead, now let's get going!
On a personal note, thanks to Andrew for letting me write for the jog. I have a lot of ideas about juggling, but I know none of my non-juggling friends would want to hear me talk even more about it, so I hope some of you readers enjoy it. Comments would be appreciated.
posted by Anonymous @ 3:55 PM
1 Comments:
Joe, I couldn't agree with you more - literally every point you made in your post, I've actually thought about these issues a lot myself and come to the same conclusions.
I have actually posted on the private forums of my club about such topics i.e. that people put mental restrictions on themselves unnecessarily, haven't posted on r.j or anything though.
I think there is a physical limitation at which people can improve simply because doing anything to gain consistency requires a certain amount of practice, however, I also think that a lot of jugglers are in completely the wrong mind set when they are learning something new or solidifying a trick, all people have to realise is that if somebody else has learnt how to do it, then they can as well.
The age thing is something else which I have spoken about, again there will be physical limitations on what you can do with your juggling because of your age, however when people say that they can't learn something because they are too old, or even that they can’t learn as fast as someone my age, I am more dubious.
On the other hand, I think learning something younger will help it stick for longer, a bit like when people learn languages at a very young age.
Having said all this, my juggling hasn't improved a great deal over the last year as I haven't been juggling frequently enough. In some ways I think this is a mental barrier that I put on myself i.e. that I feel I need to practice more than once a week to improve. Then again, I cannot be sure about this because this is a feeling that I have from quantitative evidence of me for example having to take a month off juggling completely, and it taking over a week to get any where near my previous abilities, and other similar experiences of periods without juggling.
But enough of me bitching about how little time I've had to practice over the last year, I was wondering, have you ever got better at a particular juggling trick by merely thinking about it, or by visualising it? Not a great deal of people seem to spend much time doing this, but this technique has definitely helped me, especially when first learning a trick. How much do you reckon learning juggling is a conscious process as opposed to a subconscious process?
Looking forward to your future thoughts in this blog,
Adam - what? not spellcheck...bah
Post a Comment
Top